from roserose56@lemmy.zip to world@lemmy.world on 22 Jun 11:25
https://lemmy.zip/post/66598868
cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/66598804
By pass here
“It will not be canceled,” he said. “That’s for sure.” removepaywalls.com/…/albania-kushner-project-prot…
Parts from the article:
Albanians actually taking part in the protests, however, beg to differ.
“Nobody here is protesting against Trump or Israel,” said Elis Kodra, 33, who turned up with his girlfriend for a recent rally with several thousand people outside the office of Albania’s beleaguered prime minister, Edi Rama.
“We are protesting against everything else,” he added, complaining that Albania has been ruled since the collapse of Communism 35 years ago by the same self-serving politicians who rotate in and out office, give state contracts to their friends in business and pay little attention to the economic and other grievances of ordinary citizens.
Yet protests continued, turning Tirana’s central boulevard into a nightly carnival of young and old, setting off what has been called Albania’s “flamingo revolution,” a reference to the protected area’s rich bird life.
Unfurled each night is a big banner in English that reads, “Albania is not for sale.”
Mr. Rama said in an interview that he met in January in Tirana with Ivanka Trump, who is married to Mr. Kushner, and an accompanying team of architects involved with the proposed project. But he insisted that no contracts had been signed or construction permits issued. The island at the center of the project, he said, belongs to the state and has not been sold, nor will it be.
Gentian Mocka, 56, said his family had been fighting for decades in the courts to recover over 91 acres of land confiscated by the Communist government. The property, which he said was later obtained fraudulently by a local lawyer who did work for Artur Shehu, an Albanian living in Miami, is part of a land parcel sold to partners of Mr. Kushner from Qatar in the luxury resort project.
Albania’s anticorruption agency, the Special Structure Against Corruption and Organized Crime, last week issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Shehu, a naturalized American citizen, accusing him of buying land and using Albanian construction projects to launder money for drug traffickers. The proceeds from his land sale to the Qataris have been frozen, Mr. Rama, the prime minister, said, but the sale still stood.
Mr. Mocka said that if he managed to get his land back he would happily sell it for Mr. Kushner’s project. “The whole family wants to sell and just wants to be finished with this whole thing,” he said.
Mr. Rama said the protesters were free to gather peacefully outside his office, adding, “Albania is not a dictatorship.” But he insisted that they would not derail Mr. Kushner’s resort project
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